Venturing to Venice

Today was our relaxing day at the beach - well it was meant to be our relaxing day at the beach! As our tour bus ticket didn't expire til 10.41am - yes I know accurate, we thought we'd take the first bus at 10.15am down to Santa Monica. Now the buses never run to schedule due to all the traffic so we were pushing it a little bit! It did not arrive at 10.15! What did drive past us was a police escort with a car on a trailer filming a moving car scene - cool. Thankfully our bus did turn up at 10.35 - just in the nick of time!

Our first stop today was Santa Monica Pier - where there was more filming! This time we had not only no idea who it was but also what he was saying - it was Mexican, but he did look like he was doing a link for a TV show. The pier was good, it was sunny, we stopped for a hot dog (#2 of the holiday) then took a walk along the beach towards Venice Boardwalk. it's further than you think! This is why our day wasn't as relaxing as it should have been!

At this point the weather was great, we took in the street vendors, quirky shops and performers and the odd crazy then grabbed a milkshake at Muscle Beach and watched some 3 on 3 basketball action. It did get a little heated - probably playing for money or if being cynical or believing the films drugs or women lol. There weren't many muscles on Muscle Beach, probably because it's the middle of the day on a Wednesday, early morning or a weekend would probably be busier. People were playing to pose with the muscles that were there. Sorry I shouldn't call them muscles - they are people after all. That was a little weird.

We headed back to Santa Monica - stopping on the way to buy some art from a local artist - he was cool, had a book showing his work exhibited in many countries, never been to the UK yet though.

This is where we were a little naughty as our bus tour tickets had now expired but in a taxi it would be quite expensive, if we had to get a taxi we would but we thought we'd try to get on the tour bus first. It worked!! They didn't even check our ticket! We plugged our earphones in to make it look like our first time doing this part of the tour! Heehee. We used our journey to figure out where to go for tea for our last night in LA as we didn't want to go back to Westfield. #we settled for the best steak house in Beverly Hills - Mastro's.  We managed to book a table online - good job as when we got there it was heaving! The steak was amazing - the best steak ever (well it should be at that price) but truly it was the best steak I've ever had. Big claim. Cooked perfectly. Also had great service - you can see why it's a favourite of the Beckhams and Kardashians - oh yes we googled who had been there once we got back! We even got driven back to the hotel by their private car - we asked for a taxi, got escorted to a sleek black car and driven home! It was a great way to end our time here.

What's Your Dream? (Again)

A car is vital in LA if you want to get anywhere soon, if not it takes forever! Our plan for today was to get the hop on hop off bus - which handily stops outside the hotel, we can suss out the locations and decide where we want to visit as we're never going to be able to do it all - as the guy on the plane said, you won't see everything in 4 months let alone 4 days!

We eventually got the bus, it was half and hour late and headed on the yellow line to Santa Monica. There's not much between us and Santa Monica so the guide bus played the Beach Boys down our earphones! We didn't get off at Santa Monica today, we decided to come back another day and continue on the yellow line to Beverly Hills.

We alighted here and took a stroll round Rodeo Drive, on route we saw Stan Lee! Now I obviously didn't recognise him but Daniel insisted it was him driving round a corner in a Porche. We were then on a celebrity hunt. Needless to say we didn't see anyone else - well anyone we knew. We did see an awesome car outside of Bijan - which we later found out was the most expensive men's clothes store in he world - only accessible via appointment! The car was cool, I couldn't tell you what it was but Daniel could - a Bugatti Veyron. We didn't buy anything on Rodeo - well except lunch and that was even on the corner of another street, don't think we could afford Rodeo prices!

After lunch we boarded the red route to Hollywood. It is a completely different world in Hollywood and unlike what you expect the area to be like. It is not glamorous at all, filled with souvenir shops, rammed with tourists and littered with all kinds of people dressed as different famous film characters. We got accosted by Scream and posed for a photo. We wandered around a little, took in some stars then got the red route round the rest of the tour seeing landmarks like the hotel where Julia Roberts stayed in Pretty Woman - not the Wilshire with Richard Gere - we had already seen that but her and Kits place - apparently it is still a bit of a dive like in the film! I know I have used this title before - but it is the quote that comes to mind every time I think of here. What would it have been like without Pretty Woman in the 80s!?! We also saw the Whisky A Go Go - which the Bourbon Rooms from Rock of Ages is based on and then headed back to the hotel. When I say headed back we didn't actually arrive til a couple of hours later. Not having a car means getting anywhere takes forever!

We stopped in the hotel for tea tonight as we were knackered from all the travelling!! Why are portions so large!!?!!